Friday, August 8, 2008

Did Jesus Play Beach Cricket?

This blogger certainly played and enjoyed it as a boy, and we know Prince Edward enjoyed it on the west coast four years ago, or at least appears that way in this NationNews.com photo, although he is holding the bat a little funny; but did Jesus also play beach cricket? Since the Da Vinci Hoax, oops, 'Code' more and more smarter people have come to the recognition that not everything you read in books is true, particularly "old" books. Such may be the case in this latest claim that Jesus also played cricket on the beach.

For the record, this blogger believes in the historical Jesus and the traditional Christian understanding of his life and ministry. However, I also believe that he had a normal childhood and could have played a game similar to cricket as a boy. With that caveat and for what it is worth I post the following excerpts from The Age:

"It is possible that cricket, a game venerated all over the Commonwealth, is older than currently thought. In fact, Jesus may very well have played the game (or a similar bat and ball contraption) as a child himself, according to an ancient Armenian manuscript."

"Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, points to a rare manuscript as his source.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball."

""Jesus is instructed to watch Israel's house and not leave the place while the master goes away on a tour to collect clothes to be dyed. But no sooner has Israel left the house, than Jesus runs out with the boys,'' Terian says.

"The most amazing part of the story of the nine-year-old Jesus playing a form of cricket with the boys at the sea shore, is that he would go on playing the game on water, over the sea waves.''"